Yummy!

My new favorite snack = puppy chow. How can you go wrong with chex mix, peanut butter, chocolate, and powdered sugar?

Black Bean and Salsa Soup

I don't have a picture of this recipe, but it was so good that I had to share. We had mom and Karen over for dinner one night and made this. We had it with tortilla chips and a salad. It's super easy to make and also very healthy!

INGREDIENTS
2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup chunky salsa
1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 Tbsp sour cream (or to taste)
2 Tbsp thinly sliced green onion (or to taste)

DIRECTIONS

In an electric food processor or blender, combine beans, broth, salsa, and cumin. Blend until fairly smooth.

Heat the bean mixture in a saucepan over medium heat until thoroughly heated.

Ladle soup into 4 individual bowls, and top each bowl with 1 tablespoon of the sour cream and 1/2 tablespoon green onion. (I also sprinkled cheddar cheese on top.)

Another success!

Tonight I made Blue Cheese-Stuffed Burgers for Jason and we invited my mom over as well. I made 3 burgers instead of 4 and used a little more blue cheese. They were really good! I'm just now getting to where I like blue cheese and these were great. It's another "make again recipe."




Blue Cheese-Stuffed Burgers

Cooking spray
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 pound ground round
3 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons water
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/4 cup (1 ounce) crumbled blue cheese

Coat a small nonstick skillet with cooking spray; place over medium heat until hot. Add onion; saute 5 minutes or until tender. Remove from heat; let cool. Combine onion, beef, breadcrumbs, water, and egg white in a large bowl; stir well. Divide mixture into 8 equal portions, shaping into 1/2-inch-thick patties. Spoon 1 tablespoon cheese into the center of 4 patties; top with remaining patties. Press edges together to seal.

Prepare grill. Place patties on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 4 minutes on each side or until done.

Food Blog

So apparently a pretty popular thing to do now is to have a "food blog." It seems to be mostly women my age, recently married, who are experimenting with cooking. They try out a new recipe, take a picture, and post about it in their blog. I'm not going to do an entire blog for it, but once a week I'm going to try out a new recipe and see how it goes. Tonight mom and Patrick came over to help taste test it! We had Chicken with Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce. (Found it on another blog - Annie's Eats.) Also had mashed potatoes and a squash/onion/red pepper mix of veggies. The chicken was really good and was voted a definite "make again" by everyone!



Chicken with Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, pounded thin
1 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup white wine
½ cup chicken broth
2 tbsp. sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (and drained, if packed in oil)
2 oz. herbed goat cheese
salt and pepper

Directions:
Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Heat skillet over medium-high heat and add oil. When oil is hot, add chicken breasts. Cook through, about 6-8 minutes per side, depending on the thickness. Set aside and keep warm.

In the same skillet, add the wine. Cook over medium-high heat until reduced by half, being sure to scrape up the browned bits from the chicken. Add the chicken broth and reduce that by about half too. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and heat through.

Remove skillet from heat and stir in the goat cheese. Top the chicken breasts with sauce and serve.

**For 4 of us, I doubled the recipe.**